As you read this, it is likely you are conscious. After all, you are seeing words and are aware of their meanings. You may also be aware of your phone or computer screen and some of the things ...

Consciousness is the ultimate question of existence. Nothing is more essential than our experience. Yet we have no consensus, and perhaps no clue, about what it actually is. The trouble, in part, is ...

What gives rise to human consciousness? Are some parts of the brain more important than others? Scientists began tackling these questions in more depth about 35 years ago. Researchers have made ...

The science of consciousness has not lived up to expectations. Over the summer, the neuroscientist Christof Koch conceded defeat on his 25-year bet with the philosopher David Chalmers, a lost wager ...

After decades spent ignoring the whole issue of consciousness, recent years have seen a boom, or at least a boomlet, of scientific interest. So it wasn’t entirely a breakthrough when the July 10 issue ...

A recent conversation on Reddit is all about an illustration from one of my books. It’s a diagram showing a 3D space with lots of different states of consciousness depicted as blobs floating in space.

How does consciousness arise in mere flesh and blood? To the neuroscientist Anil Seth, our organic bodies are the key to the experience. Anil Seth wants to understand how minds work. As a ...

The origin of consciousness has teased the minds of philosophers and scientists for centuries. In the last decade, neuroscientists have begun to piece together its neural underpinnings—that is, how ...

What is consciousness? It is one of the most perplexing questions in science. You would expect our intimacy with it to give us a leg up in understanding how it works, but this has proven to be more of ...

Civil war has broken out in the field of consciousness research. More than 100 consciousness researchers have signed a letter accusing one of the most popular scientific theories of consciousness – ...